All About Me

A few years ago I found myself unexpectedly without any ducks to line up. My job was gone, and a new journey seemed in order. I'm just entering (having finished the schooling) a new career as a nurse, and I’m dreaming about the new journeys that will open to me. A pierced nose, wearing scarves often and still dreaming of traveling the world, writing in European coffee shops, praying in South American ruins, and living somewhere warm enough to wear skirts with flip flops or really cute shoes year round remain high on my list of priorities! These days that warm place I'm dreaming about is Florida... maybe someday I'll escape my cold Canadian home for warmer climes!

Thursday, May 13, 2010

This was today's Garfield cartoon. It made me smile, and then pause to reflect just a little. Because I haven't always been a big fan of myself. In fact, it's something I still struggle with. Just before I turned 25, a dear friend and I were talking about self care, and self image, and seeing oneself as the creation of God, and she assigned a task to me. She asked me to make a list of 25 Things I Love About Myself. Not things that connected to other people, but things that were actually about me. The very idea made me cringe. I finally sat down one Sunday afternoon a few months before my 26th birthday to complete the task she'd been strategically reminding me of all year. If I'm being totally honest, I completed it partly because she told me I owed her an extra item for each birthday that passed before I completed the list, and the idea of needing even one more item when 25 was so hard was daunting.

I won't share the list here, as it's rather personal, but the excercise forced me to look at myself just a little bit differently. To celebrate little things that are unique to the way God created me. It's an ongoing process, and I was reminded of that process, of the progress that's been made, and the distance left to come as I read this cartoon this morning. I think I'm going to print the cartoon out and stick it up on my wall at work, and at home, as an ongoing reminder that the quest to see differently includes seeing myself differently.